


The Purpose of War

by deborah_judge



Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Genre: F/F, Gang Rape, Gen, Torture, Wartime
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-08
Updated: 2012-08-08
Packaged: 2017-11-11 17:10:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,685
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/480892
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deborah_judge/pseuds/deborah_judge
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cain uses rape as a weapon of war because she knows that's how it works.  A prequel to <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/336492">The End of the Interrogation</a>, and like it set in an AU in which the Caprica Resistance and the Pegasus don't make contact with the Galactica but they do make contact with each other.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Purpose of War

When Cain was a Junior Lieutenant, two years after joining up, she had once had the misfortune of going drinking with an idiot Captain who couldn't stop telling her how she didn't belong in the Fleet. "No women do," he said. "It's biological. When men win battles they take the defeated women and spread their genes. That's why men are programmed to fight, that's the entire purpose of war. It's the most basic urge that men have, to conquer so they can reproduce more broadly.

"Not that we do that any more, of course," he added drunkenly. Of course. And there was no point in saying anything, Cain already had her plan to take him down, but she couldn't help herself. 

"That's not the most basic urge," she said. He lolled his head at her, eyes red, but punching him would be useless. "It's revenge," she said. "That's the most basic urge that humans have." As a practical matter, he'd discover the implications of that soon enough.

Before Cain joined up she lived on the streets with a gang of children. The bomb that had taken her family and home had left nowhere else for her to go. There were others like her, children of dead families huddled together in bombed-out buildings for warmth. They were the lucky ones, the ones who had lived when their families and everyone who cared for them were gone. They lived on caned food from bombed kitchens, on carcasses of rats and squirrels, and on what they could steal from the poor pathetic Capricans who had vainly come to help and from other children who weren't quite as strong. There was never enough, but they were lucky. They were alive. At eleven Cain wasn't the oldest, but she also wasn't weak, and she knew that if she didn't fight for food she was going to die without it.

Two years later a military recruiter set up an office in the ruins of Tauron to take people who didn't have anywhere else to go. Cain was in the first group to enlist, and while the recruiter must have known she was lying about her age she doubted he knew she was off by four years.

*

Cain knew there was a chance at being alive when she heard the weak, faint transmission from Caprica. _calling colonial vessels, calling colonial vessels…_. It was stupid to answer, the channel wasn't secure, but she scrambled her signal to make it sound like she was at the other end of the galaxy and sent three words: _who are you?_

The answers came slowly, hesitantly, between bursts of enemy fire and her scrambled Vipers shooting raiders out of the sky. His name was Sam Anders, a fomer pyramid player leading what he called the Caprica resistance. Cain knew what civilians could do when cornered, she'd seen it in her childhood, seen boys as young as five kill slightly weaker children for food. And Anders was hitting the Cylon, hitting them hard, blowing them up when he could, sniping when they got in range, even burning forests to make trees fall on their heads.

"Don't they just come back?" Cain asked.

"That's not the point," Anders said. "The point is to hurt them. When they come back they remember it, remember all of it. Eventually it's going to hurt so much they can't stand it, and they'll leave because it hurts less to go than to stay."

"And then we go after them," Cain said. "We go to their world and we hurt them so much they never ever come back."

It was sweet, seductive, with a taste of possibility. Humans had a world they could go back to, if they were strong enough. Only one world out of twelve, but that would be enough for the few humans that were left. They were the lucky ones, out of forty billion the only few thousand left alive. The crew and supplies they had taken from the Scylla were enough to keep them going, to keep them fighting, and Sam's words braced her with their faint hope of survival.

In the holding cell Thorne kept Gina manacled and gagged. Cain tried not to look at her, although a brief glance was enough to see the bruises. The night after the attacks Gina had held her close, had touched her, had told her not to be afraid. 

"I see you're hurting her," Cain said, then corrected herself. "Hurting it. Good. Keep hurting it. Make sure it doesn't die."

There were many Cylons, Anders told her, but there were only a few models. The ones who looked alike seemed to share memories. The one that looked like Gina seemed to have power. "Do you think they'll know there what we're doing to them here?" Cain asked Anders.

"I don't know," Anders said. "But it's all we can do." _Can we do anything else?_ the question hung between them, and Cain hung on to the radio like a lifeline.

A few days later Anders told her about the Farms. Cain knew about rape. In the gangs the older boys made anyone who went up against them take it if they lost. Boys took it in the ass and hoped that the older boys bothered to use lube. Girls took it in the pussy and if they got pregnant ate berries and hoped they didn't die. Cain never had to take it because she never lost. In the Farms the remnant of humanity lay on their backs, tubes in orifices while the Cylons used them.

"I need you to rape it," Cain said to Thorne the next time he reported. _Her. It._ "The medic has drugs that can help you." Middle-aged men who couldn't satisfy their wives were hardly a high-priority need. "Try to have the Cylon raped by as many men as you can." There were only a few models. The pain and humiliation they suffer would be remembered. Hurting them is the only power we have. "I need you to do this," she said. She couldn't do it herself. She'd watched girls give it up, in the gangs, when she needed to show she was in control, but the memory of Gina's mouth on her was too sweet and she couldn't do this. 

Thorne didn't say anything. "Did you already do it?" The thought made her rage inside. "Good," she said. She thought about Gina in manacles, the bruises purpling on her inner thighs.

At night Cain grabbed on to the radio and listened to Sam. Every day his resistance group was smaller. Some of his people were killed. Others were taken to the Farms. "I know they've got a bed for me there," Anders said. "I know one day they're going to take me, and they're going to put their things in me, and I won't be able even to die."

"We just have to keep hurting them," Cain said.

"That's right," said Anders, and his voice was faint and she wanted to give him strength she didn't have. "Fight until we can't."

The next day Cain watched man after man penetrate Gina's limp body. Gina didn't respond, just lay there as they frakked her. Sometimes they'd hit her, or pull her hair, or stick sharp pins in her arm while they thrust. She was good at not responding, but sometimes the pain would be too great and she would cry out, and the man would hit her again before thrusting one last time and leaving his semen on her bloody genitals and bruised legs. 

"I'd like a turn," Cain said to Thorne. He told the man pumping in Gina to get out of the way. "I'd like privacy," Cain said. When the room was clear, Cain turned off all the cameras and barred the door. If the Cylon wanted to gather the strength to try to hurt her, the Cylon was welcome to try. Gina lay face down on the floor, her torn dress not covering anything of consequence. Cain tore it to expose more, then kicked Gina to turn her over and look in her bruised, empty eyes. Gina just watched her.

"Say something," Cain said.

"I've made love to you willingly," Gina said. "You don't have to force me."

And that was it, that was enough, she kicked Gina over and over hard enough to bruise, then harder. And it was pointless, Gina didn't respond, it was like kicking a copse, like killing someone she had already killed. "Forty billion people," she said. _They were the lucky ones, those few who survived. What would they do to be worthy of survival, and to avenge those many fallen?_. "Forty billion people." It was too much, an unimaginable number, and Cain's boot on Gina's thighs and belly couldn't help her understand it. All her people, everyone she'd ever learned how to love. 

A final kick broke a rib, and then Cain had to stop because she couldn't let Gina die. Her pain was what mattered. Gina's pain was all that could save them. She sat down at the far end of the cell and put her face in her hands. 

"I wish I were a man," Cain said, and the words shocked her. She'd never wished that before, not even in the gangs when a few extra ounces of strength would've made her that much less afraid for her life. Then she thought about the idiot Captain, years ago, and his stupid, stupid wrongness, and how much she wished that she could allow herself the illusion that this was about life.

"But you're not," Gina said. "And I'm not human."

"No," Cain said. "No you're not."

Cain stood up, let herself out, and locked the door behind her. "You can go back," she told Thorne and the men, and heard the sound of rape behind her. She went to her room and lay close to the radio as Anders gave his status report. Three more dead. Two more missing. Four Cylons killed in pain. She curled up around Anders' voice and let it hold her against the dark.


End file.
